How to use the future in the past - English In A Minute

89,854 views ・ 2020-01-27

BBC Learning English


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Sometimes we want to talk about something we thought
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would happen in the future at a point in the past.
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00:05
We'll look at how to do this now.
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To do this, we use past versions of future forms.
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00:11
'Will' becomes 'would'.
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00:13
Yesterday I said I would go to the park.
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'Going to' becomes 'was going to'. Like this:
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00:19
The last time I saw you,
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you were going to start a new job. What's it like?
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The present continuous becomes the past continuous.
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Last week you were visiting your family
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the day after I saw you. How did it go?
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So to recap:
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'will' becomes 'would',
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'going to' becomes 'was going to'
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and the present continuous
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becomes the past continuous.
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At the start,
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I said we'd look at how to talk about the
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future in the past. And now we have.
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Bye!
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